Category: Technology Author : Duncan Riley Posted: July 8, 2008
Tags : Blogroll, inquisitr iq, outbrain, regator
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What ever happened to blogrolls?

Once upon a time in the land of the blogs, the blogroll reigned suprmeme. Everyone had a blogroll, and it was a great way to discover new and interesting blogs. But somewhere along the way blogrolls fell out of favor, and you don’t seem them much at all today.

I’m just as guilty here at The Inquisitr. The template doesn’t really allow for a old fashioned blogroll, and I’ve not tried to create one. And yet I miss the comradeship a blogroll use to offer, a way of sharing links to sites and people you liked or were friends with, and if you were lucky, you’d get a link back.

Google is at least partly to blame. The hysteria surrounding link=nofollow and blogs being punished for paid links made many would-be blogroll owners particularly shy of blogrolls.

Unlike other areas of blogging, where today we see great new services (such as in the commenting space) nothing has seemingly popped up to replace blogrolls. Outbrain offers contextual links across sites, which is a handy feature, but it’s not a blogroll replacement. Something like Regator, but offered white-label could be another possible alternative. Inquisitir iQ wasn’t created as a blogroll alternative, but it’s the closest way I’ve got today to sharing links to content and people I like (and I’ll be adding some new pages next week).

So what happened to the blogroll? Is there any alternatives you’re aware of? Or am I being overly sentimental? Leave a comment below or reply via video in the Seesmic embed with your thoughts.

centernetworks

what's interesting is that the oldies got the blogroll links, the newbies (e.g. you and me) get zip :)

jeber

I still use them on my blogs. I don't blog for the income, I blog to share and comment on what I encounter on the internet. I also don't use predefined blogrools. I pick my own categories and link to sites I read myself and enjoy. It's my small contribution to community building.

Hutch Carpenter

I recently dropped the blogroll on my blog. No one ever bothered clicking the links. What people do click are the links in my blog posts (yes, it does still happen). The blogs to which I link regularly in my blog posts are a much better barometer of the ones I follow than my blogroll ever was. I really didn't keep the blogroll up to date.

Shey

Yeah Hutch, I know what you mean.

It just looked to me like blogrolls went out of style.

olahav

Hey Duncan
We don't know each other, but I'm Ori, outbrain CTO.
we once developed a nice feature for sidebars that shows the blogger's favorite posts.
you can rate your good stuff using outbrain widgets or outbrain FireFox extension and yout latest top ratings will be shown as links on your sidebar.
You can see it on my blog's right sidebar (http://olahav.typepad.com) the feature is not currently maintained but... if there is an interest. we might bring it up to stage again.

Take a look, I'll be happy to know what you're thinking.

James Joyner

I've still got a blogroll using blogrolling.com but it's AJAX'ed so you don't see the links unless you click for them. But mine, like most, is a museum. There are defunct blogs on the list and it really hasn't been updated in two years. Nor do I use it myself like I once did.

Eric Berlin

Very interesting question, Duncan. I thought about it awhile and the short answer, for me at the least, is that RSS helped to lead to the demise of blogrolls. I expand on the notion here: http://tinyurl.com/6afnjp

Cheers, EB

graubart

Good post, Duncan. I still find blogrolls useful in the same way that I check out a FOAF in friendfeed or twitter - it's a good way to discover interesting people and blogs. Unfortunately, blogrolls are a pain to maintain. When you first launch (or redesign) a blog, you tend to give careful thought to who should be on your blogroll, what that says about you, whether they'll link back, etc. But, if you're like most people, you never give your blogroll much thought after that. So, in my case, my blogroll largely reflects the sites that I used to read 4-5 years ago when I launched the blog. What would be more useful, imo, would be a dynamic blogroll, sort of like Friendfeed's stats page, showing the blogs that I've visited and/or commented on most during the past 30 days. Alternatively, a link-based blogroll, showing the sites I've linked to most frequently could also work. Whatever the approach, it has to be dynamic and fully automated so the author doesn't have to give it any thought.

holgr

Interesting topic. On my personal friends' sites I nowadays often see embedded rss-feeds of other sites that show the last posted entry on their blogs. You could call it a mini-blog on your own blog. In addition they also have the "good ol'" blogroll on their sites.

Shane

I'm starting to see blogrolls being replaced by RSS feeds of the writer's Google Reader shared items. Keeps it more up to date and demonstrates not just what they are reading but what they think is important enough to share.

Ari Herzog

If you take the perspective that every feed in your RSS reader is a blog you like, then that is your private blogroll. But blogrolling is about sharing blogs you like with other people. While my blogroll was very short once upon a time, it is very huge now. I only link to about 2% on my blog and I am considering removing all of them, shifting them to my feed reader and to del.icio.us, and if any strike my fancy I can contextually link to them in a future post.

KipEsquire

False dichotomy. The RSS aggregator and the blogroll can be one and the same. Bloglines and Blogrolling have both offered this option (i.e., embedding on a website) for years. I use it for my blogroll.

Google Reader does not yet offer (to the best of my knowledge) the option of embedding it onto one’s blog, but I’m sure it will come eventually.

svartling

Blogrolls disappeared because bloggers started to be a afraid of competition. Simple as that. I thought that was what blogging was all about? Linking to each other? Money ruined it.

Sulumits Retsambew Web Hosting

the death of blogroll? Because google kills the blogroll.

blogroll still need to use it in the blog to get a linkback to your site. you can get a links with reciprocal links that you offer it.

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What ever happened to blogrolls?

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